Escape: A Stepbrother Romance (32 page)

Besides, I needed a job that would have plenty of downtime. I had an exam to study for. From some basic research, it didn’t look like my run in with the authorities in the UK would prevent me getting a student visa to study at school there.

I checked some of the top universities in England and they had no hard and fast rules for being admitted as a foreign student. I just had to take the SAT and hope for the best. My GPA from school was good—considering how little effort I put into it—but my lack of extracurricular activities would hurt me at a place like Cambridge. I applied to Cambridge anyway, but widened the pool to include universities somewhat less prestigious.

I walked into the perfect job opportunity when I was buying books for SAT study. I
literally
walked into it. I grabbed the books and turned to walk to the cashier, but walked straight into a wall instead. Vicky had changed me in more ways than I realized. There was no way the old me would have been a clumsy ass walking into walls in a bookstore.  

On the wall was a poster advertising vacant positions. It was part-time, but the money would be just enough to keep the cupboards full while dipping into the money from Sheri when I needed to.

Working in a bookstore was ideal. I had opportunities to dip into my studying, and if I got bored of that then there was an entire section on medieval English history for me to bury my nose in. Word somehow got round that I was working in a bookstore and some friends came in to check me out. They couldn’t believe I had a job, let alone a job working in a bookstore.

“Come on, Caiden,” Chad said one afternoon. “This is some sort of scam, right? Let me guess. There’s some beautiful piece of ass working here and your usual charms didn’t work with her? Am I right?”

“Something like that,” I replied. I couldn’t be bothered to argue and I wanted Chad out before he made a scene. He was an obnoxious ass and I had no idea why I’d ever liked spending time with him. Probably because he made me look good.

“You’re wasting your time, man. I’ve fucked nerdy girls before and they’re boring as hell in bed. She’s just going to lie there and I guarantee you she won’t let your dick touch her lips. Mind you,” he continued, unaware that I was close to punching him, “they also don’t like it when you lick their pussy. They think the whole thing is gross so at least you don’t have to do that.”

Chad was like a caricature and I would have told him that if I’d thought he knew what it meant. Fortunately one of his other meathead friends came and dragged him away before I lost my temper. I kept my cool much longer these days, but I still had limits. Chad didn’t know a thing about sex with ‘nerds’ as he put it. Vicky probably came under that category to most objective observers but she certainly didn’t mind sucking dick, and she held my head between her legs at every opportunity.

The other advantage of working at a bookstore instead of an office was the lack of access to a computer. If I’d sat at a computer all day, I wouldn’t have been able to resist typing a name into a search engine. All I had to do was type two words—Victoria Marshall—and I would find her.

I’d be able to see pictures of her on social media sites and find out if she was making friends. I’d also know if she had a boyfriend. That thought was sobering enough to stop me typing her name when I found my fingers hovering over the keyboard. She would get a boyfriend at some point, but I wanted to wait long enough that the heartbreak might not be so violent. How long would that take? Three years? Five years? Ten?

I saw her face wherever I went. I’d probably left a trail of creeped out women wherever I went because I would stare at them just a little bit too long for comfort. On the way to work from my apartment I would see someone who looked a bit like her every couple of hundred yards. No one dressed like that here though. Even when she started to loosen up a little bit, no one in San Francisco dressed quite so… English. And there was no mistaking that smile. No one else had a smile quite like hers.  

I had plenty of pictures of Vicky on my phone, but what I really missed was her voice. I missed it so much that one day as I was about to enter my apartment, I could swear I heard her talking in the apartment next door to mine.

I tried to shake it off, but the voice seemed to get louder and louder until it was all I could hear. I listened next to the door. It was her. I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but the posh English accent was exactly the voice I left behind in England.

I knocked on my neighbor’s door and asked if they had received any of my mail by mistake. It was just an excuse to hear the noise better. While my neighbor checked for the mail I focused on the voice. It was coming from his kitchen which, like mine, was located near the front door. Vicky wasn’t in the room—of course she wasn’t—but that was her voice. It was coming from a laptop judging by the slightly tinny sound of the speakers.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “this might sound a little unusual, but I can hear a voice coming from the kitchen. It sounds so familiar.”

“Oh, that’s a YouTube channel my wife listens to for cooking tips.” He shouted to his wife to ask the name of the channel. He frowned before telling me the name. “Posh With a Twist. Sounds like a weird name to me.”

I smiled and agreed. It was a weird name, but it was exactly the sort of name Vicky would have chosen. Her voice sounded almost like a younger version of the Queen, but the words coming out of her mouth were not what you typically heard from royalty.

Now I couldn’t help myself. I went online and found her YouTube channel. I watched hours and hours of her videos, smiling the entire time. She was phenomenal. In each video she dressed like a middle-aged wife from the 50s, but introduced basic and often unhealthy recipes that were easy to make for people at home, especially students.  

I could see the quality of the videos improving over time as she spent more money on props and editing software, but her personality stayed the same throughout. She was hilarious. She swore in a way that just didn’t seem natural coming from her lips, but everyone seemed to love it. Her videos racked up millions of views and she even had a professional looking website to go with it.

After watching her on the videos, it was all I could do not to jump on a plane and go see her. Screw waiting for her to move on with her life. I wanted her now and I couldn’t wait. I took the SAT and applied for universities. Cambridge rejected me—the bastards—but Oxford offered me a place to read history. I snapped it up and applied for the visa.

The wait was agonizing. I eagerly awaited each new video from Vicky, but always felt despondent at the end. Her signature signoff at the end of videos always reminded me of what we’d never said to each other. We’d done a lot together, but I’d never said those three words. Not to her face anyway.

At the end of each video she said goodbye to her fans with an enthusiastic “Thank you. I love all you wankers.”
I love you, too
, I replied each time to my laptop. It probably would’ve been romantic if it wasn’t so pathetic.

I followed her career intently and bought her book the second it was released. The dedication at the front moved me to tears. She didn’t mention my name, but it was clear she was speaking to me.

This book is dedicated to the two most important people in my life. First, the woman who made this possible by introducing me to cooking. She’s no longer with us today, but I’ll remember her forever in my heart. Second, the man who broke down my barriers and made me realize what I was capable of. His absence is only temporary and I know he will be with me again soon.

When she produced an American version of the book in hardcover, I convinced the manager at the bookstore to buy dozens of copies. He was reluctant at first because she was self-published, but when I showed him how popular she was online he relented.  

I arrived at work early and put the books at the front of the store and on display in the window. They disappeared in just a few days. We kept ordering more, and I noticed other retailers started selling it as well.

I followed the progress of my visa online. It was moving as quickly as could be expected, which in this case meant ridiculously slowly. I would get a visa in time for classes to start in September, but that felt like an age away not just two months.

Work was hectic during the summer. Tourists flocked to our bookstore which had a reputation as an old, independently run store, full of book lovers. We did a good job cultivating that reputation to combat the bigger stores in the area. The store was a tourist attraction of sorts and had people of all nationalities visiting, even though we mainly stocked English-language books with a scattering of Chinese and Spanish secondhand books that we found hard to sell.

I tended to linger in the history section of the bookstore, because that was where I could actually add some insight for customers. Unfortunately, during the summer not many people wanted to read history books so I found myself aimlessly tidying the shelves and reminding myself that I only had six more weeks before I could go to England.

A customer approached from behind me, but I didn’t bother to turn around. He or she was probably just on the way to the bathroom which was located just ten feet away.

“I should have known I’d find you here,” a posh English voice said behind me.

I spun round and looked at Vicky. She’d abandoned the frumpy clothes she wore for her videos and was probably unrecognizable to her fans when dressed in shorts and a light, flowery top.

“You have a lot of explaining to do, mister,” she said with a devilish smile. I’d lied to her about being imprisoned and she obviously knew that now, but judging by the smile lighting up her face she didn’t care. “Well? Aren’t you going to say anything?”

“I love you,” I said softly.

She laughed and looked down at her feet, temporarily going back to the shy eighteen-year-old I met a lifetime ago.

“I love you, too.”

Gemma had been the one to tell me the truth about Caiden and his arrest. She had enough connections in the City to know Dad’s law firm never pressed charges against Caiden. I spent some time at home during the summer on the pretence of keeping up with Dad, but really I just wanted to see how Gemma was doing.

She’d assumed I knew what had happened, so when I mentioned Caiden being in prison she immediately told me that he had been released. She wasn’t about to let me live a lie again.

Once I knew that, it hadn’t been hard to track Caiden down. He didn’t bother with social media websites, but I remembered the suspiciously large order of books I got from a bookstore in San Francisco and knew that must have been something to do with him. I hadn’t expected him to actually be working there, but that had been a pleasant surprise.

I think he expected me to be angry at him for the lies, but he had the best intentions and I knew he hadn’t been with any other women since me. For someone with no interest in cooking at all, I’d been surprised to see he had kept up-to-date with all my videos and some of the information seemed to have rubbed off on him. He still couldn’t actually cook, but he could at least join in the conversation now.

With the money from the book I could easily afford the trip to San Francisco, although I limited my stay to a week. Any more than that and my business would start to go off the rails. In theory, I could’ve worked remotely from San Francisco, but Caiden and I spent the entire week doing exactly what any reunited couple would do in our position. I never even saw the Golden Gate Bridge and about my only memory of San Francisco was the ceiling of Caiden’s apartment.

Caiden had been busy over the previous year as well. He somehow got a place at a university in England. I’d known for a while—perhaps even before him—that he had a bit of an obsession with English history, but I had no idea he had the good grades to go with it. It turned out he was rather clever; he just hid it well.

I moved up to Oxford when Caiden started university. I could work from wherever I liked; I just needed a decent sized kitchen and a well lit room, so we found a nice apartment and lived there while he studied.

The complete turnaround in the last year felt bizarre. I never ceased being surprised that
I
was the self-employed business owner, while
Caiden
was a student at university. The other way around seemed more likely, but we were both much happier this way. Of course, I never missed an opportunity to tease Caiden about how I was the breadwinner, for the time being at least, but much to my annoyance he was too mature to be bothered by it.